Descriptive analytics is a preliminary stage of data processing that creates a summary of historical data to yield useful information and prepare the data for further analysis. Descriptive analytics is sometimes said to provide information about the past or what happened.

The vast majority of the statistics used today fall into this category. (Like sums, averages, or percentages).  For all practical purposes, there are an infinite number of these statistics. Descriptive statistics are useful to show things like, total stock in inventory, average dollars spent per customer and Year over year change in sales. Common examples of descriptive analytics are reports that provide historical insights regarding the company’s production, financials, operations, sales, finance, inventory and customers.